Cathedrals belong to everyone. In vox pop interviews in secular France after the Notre Dame fire we heard so often: “I’m an atheist, but Notre Dame is part of me.” Reactions in Britain would be the same: a great cathedral stands for so much more than religion, narrowly conceived. It represents human skill, the quest for beauty and the continuity of communities over a length of time far greater than even many lifetimes. Attendance at cathedral services now bucks the national downward trend in the Church of England, but does not necessarily signal a widespread conversion to Christianity.
At Easter, it seems natural to commentators to speak of the resurrection of the damaged cathedral, or to use the image of the phoenix reborn from its own ashes. Resurrection, too, is so much more than a religious symbol. In the northern hemisphere it has associations with the resurgence of nature – hence daffodils and bunnies – and speaks to the universal wish that death could somehow be defeated.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2ICL6ib
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